Photographs: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team/Reuters
The Hubble Space Telescope, which was carried into orbit in 1990, orbits outside the distortion of Earth's atmosphere allowing it to take extremely sharp images with almost no background light.
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Stunning images from the farthest corners of our cosmos
Photographs: NASA/Reuters
The tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation Carina.
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Stunning images from the farthest corners of our cosmos
Photographs: NASA/Reuters
A view of the Whirlpool Galaxy's curving arms where newborn stars reside and its yellowish central core that serves as home for older stars.
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Stunning images from the farthest corners of our cosmos
Photographs: NASA/ESA/J. Hester/Reuters
An image of a small region within a hotbed of star formation M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, located about 5,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius.
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Stunning images from the farthest corners of our cosmos
Photographs: NASA/Reuters
An image of the Eagle Nebula reveals a tall, dense tower of gas being sculpted by ultraviolet light from a group of massive, hot stars.
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Stunning images from the farthest corners of our cosmos
Photographs: HO/ESA/NASA/Albert Zijlstra/Reuters
An image of the Bug Nebula shows impressive walls of compressed gas, laced with trailing strands and bubbling outflows. A dark, dusty torus surrounds the inner nebula (seen at the upper right). At the heart of the turmoil is one of the hottest stars known.
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Stunning images from the farthest corners of our cosmos
Photographs: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team/Reuters
The "Black Eye" galaxy, so named because an ancient cosmic smashup produced a dark ring and a roiling, conflicted interior. What looks like a black eye in the image is actually a dark band of dust that stands out vividly in front of the galaxy's bright nucleus.
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Stunning images from the farthest corners of our cosmos
Photographs: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage/Handout/Reuters
An image shows a giant star-forming nebula with massive young stellar clusters.
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Stunning images from the farthest corners of our cosmos
Photographs: Handout/Reuters
Image taken from Hubble space telescope shows a crater on an object called 8405 Asbolus, a 48 mile-wide chuck of ice and dust that lies between Saturn and Uranus. Astronomers using the telescope found what looks like a fresh water crater less than 10 million years old, exposing underlying ice that is apparently unlike any yet seen.
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Stunning images from the farthest corners of our cosmos
Photographs: NASA/ESA/Reuters
The first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star. Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter's mass the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away.
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